


The Way I Am Now

by enmity



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28571490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: “What would it take for me to be like you?”
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	The Way I Am Now

Xion whiles away the final week of summer vacation alone. Her room is respectably tidy, almost spartan; there are no pictures of herself on the wall, and the only giveaway of sentimentality is a shoebox under her bed, battered-up and overflowing with the seashells she’d pulled out of the sand in a beach trip, in that time of your life when stars were jewels you could pluck out of the sky and clouds were castles built out of soft-serve and upturned sand dollars were the sum of all the treasures in the world.

She’s pulled out her school uniform from her closet and had it ironed in a fit of caffeine and jittery restlessness. The shirt and skirt dangle on separate hangers on the coat rack by the mirror, and it’s not the first time she’s glanced at her own reflection, and wondered if she’d look better in the boys’ slacks instead. She thinks, absently, that her parents might disapprove, but –

She keeps an envelope of pocket money in her desk drawer, on top of the notes she didn’t take and the homework she hasn’t been doing. Her handwriting's too messy and she uses too many different colored pens, and when she’s copying numbers off the blackboard it feels more like she’s swimming through fog. So she plays imaginary hangman and rips off the pages off her notebook, whiteout pen painted over her mistakes, lines of miswritten equations and half-formed sentences, scratched-out stick figures; she tears them in halves and halves of halves, pieces scattering down the clock tower and halfway across town, false dandelion pods from which nothing will grow.

She’ll have to rewrite them all in a few days’ time, but she can’t bring herself to care.

–

Xion whiles away the final week of summer vacation alone. She has friends—of course she has friends, people she buys ice cream with, who wave to her on the way home and touch her on the shoulder, whispering things like, _are you okay?_

When she nods and smiles, so do they, and that makes it all right. It's all right. They believe her. One day she might find the right mind to believe them too.

–

Her diary exists in the margins of her notebooks: _I was so happy,_ she writes once, letters looping and smearing black, blue, purple, and doesn’t know what she expects to prove. She forgets things, and oversleeps often, and on those days her handwriting makes up one half of a one-person conversation.

 _Make breakfast_ , she writes to her future self. _Turn off the gas before you go out._

She writes reminders, too. _I ate ice cream today; it was fun. I was so happy. I was so happy._

Xion writes, her other hand clenched around the oversized key like it’s the only familiar thing she’s ever known: _what would it take for me to be like you?_

She doesn’t know.

-

The man in red hair and black coat doesn’t know, either. She thinks she might have known him, seen a picture in the paper or heard a classmate mention his name; she has to stand on her tiptoes just to touch him on the shoulder, and when she asks, shivering despite the summer haze, he says he’s just a tourist. “Sorry,” he tells her, half-distracted, half-sneering, “I’m not your guy,” and when he gestures to the blonde boy waiting down the street, condensation dripping from two packets of ice cream in his hand, she can’t very well keep him waiting.

She stays standing in the empty station until the clock starts to chime, and by then, with the sound echoing low and heavy in her ears, it’s as if she’s just remembered not to be upset.

-

On the final day, Xion breaks through the lock of the haunted house, and marches to the room with glaring screens and cold consoles, the fraying boundary of her false world. Her hand twitches when she sees polygon counts, percentages, numbers and spreadsheets; she remembers frustration, but she remembers headaches even better, and she stills her hand, leaving them well enough alone. She keeps walking, trepidation buoying her every step. 

The Hero waits for her, suspended in pale petals and a white, white room, and she remembers now. A witch in white with downturned eyes and a forlorn offer.

Once, she’d been so close—so, so ready to reach the ending she had hoped for. 

“What would it take for me to be like you?” the puppet had asked.

She knows.

She knows.

She stretches one hand out to meet Sora, and runs, smiling all the while.


End file.
